How Hot Does A Gun Barrel Get

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I was wonder how hot i can allow my barrel on my AR or AK to go before i adventure causing harm.
During rapid fire fun it sometimes gets mode to hot to touch.
I accept i of those infrared thermometers, is their some magic number?
What kind of damage are you worried about?
It's not like you lot're going to lose the precision accurateness you're currently enjoying. And the barrel isn't likely to come apart on you. I wouldn't worry. Information technology's an AK!
I have wondered that myself I always try to be careful and shoot in outburst when just letting them fly , you are right it does not accept much to get barrel hot to the impact.
Im sure someone volition know !!!!!
Here is one magic number for you 600F - that is about the bedchamber temperature where yous volition begin to run across melt-offs because the chamber is hot plenty to detonate the primer. You tin have melt-offs at much lower temperatures than that, particularly if the ammo has been stored badly and the primers have get unstable; so don't remember you are safe just because you are at 550F.
On ARs, I wouldn't sweat information technology too much. You lot can hit barrel temps of 300F pretty regularly and your standard chrome-lined barrel will still be good for striking silhouettes out to 600yds for about 10k rounds. Y'all may start losing consistency at longer ranges effectually 5k though.

On AKs, I wouldn't sweat it either every bit there isn't a whole lot of precision to use.

With standard handguards on either rifle, a good rule of pollex is to stop shooting and let it absurd when yous encounter smoke coming off the handguards (you can ignore white smoke from AR handguards, that is just CLP burning off - blackness smoke is the glue holding the metal heat shields burning and that is a practiced sign to stop).

If you want the accented maximum possible life out of your barrel, but cease shooting whenever the barrel gets also hot to hold with your bare manus; just you can exceed that standard quite a bit and go and nevertheless get 10-20k rounds of employ out of a barrel.
Sometimes??? It'll always become too hot to touch shooting speedily. We used to be able to get the wooden forestock an a C1A1 smoldering with two twenty round mags. Some of them were charred from it. Never bothered the rifle though.
My personal rule is, if you're uncomfortable (with the temp,) the gun is uncomfortable, too.
That gives a pretty wide safety margin.
Hot to the affect is around 115 degrees F which is nothing for steel.
2 issues that I can think of (putting on my engineer hat):

1. Permanent Distortion of the barrel from excessive oestrus - I remember this falls under the category of "practiced luck". Steel starts moving effectually up in the 600, 700, 800 caste range - don't remember my metallurgy but I am think it'd be existent difficult for you to oestrus it up enough to misconstrue the barrel. At that temp, you lot'd have trouble holding it. Depends on the limerick of the steel also equally the dimensions of the part.

2. Mechanical harm from shifting tolerances and or localized spot heat: you could get increased barrel wear or vesture on other parts if things expanded from the heat . . . . again not sure this would exist an result.

Tin't retrieve of anything else . . . . but in both cases I'm thinking information technology'd be hard to hurt a semi auto from rut.
Estrus AND pressure level both cause erosion.
I remember reading somewhere an ordinance test that burned upwardly a machine gun barrel in 3000 rounds of constant firing (about 5 minutes).
They but kept slapping on new barrels and kept firing for quite a few more than barrels before any other parts failed.
For another good reference betoken, dumping a mag from an M4 barrel as fast every bit you can volition take you from a cold start of 86F to 230F.
I was really wondering almost this with my M1. It gets rediculously hot (even the front handguard, and upper handguard), and so that information technology causes plastic bags to cook immediately on contact. And this is only almost 100 rounds worth!
The only damage I could think of would be for the barrel to sag.
You would be very hard pressed to burn down a semi-automobile burglarize fast plenty to heat upwardly the butt until it glowed.
Long earlier that yous will set wood handguards on burn down, and run the risk of melting plastic handguards, both depending on any heatshields the burglarize may have.

Not something to worry about unless you lot have a selective burn down weapon.
I accept fired my M1A's fast plenty to go the oil on the butt to smoke a scrap, but I really incertitude I got it that hot to do much damage to the gun. My personal bet is all the same that you do far more harm past cleaning and then past shooting unless you have a total car (idiots and damage washed by stupidity are excluded).
So the AR15.com reliability test (6 mags fired quickly) isn't too difficult on the AR?
That volition probably put the temperature up around 500F if you utilize an M4 barrel and the ambient temp is around 85F. If you practice that kind of affair consistently, information technology will decrease the lifespan of the barrel. How much it volition decrease the lifespan depends on what accuracy standard y'all need at and what ranges y'all programme to shoot it.
If a military adequate 4MOA is good enough for y'all and you never shoot by 100yds, and then you tin can do half-dozen-mag dump tests similar that for tens of thousands of rounds before you'll notice anything.

On the other manus, if you want to hit highpower targets at 600yds, yous'll might find problems as early every bit 3k rounds with an M4 barrel if you do a lot of the to a higher place kind of shooting.

Think of it kind of like gas mileage... you can get amend mileage by driving everywhere at 25mph; but while you'll use more gas going 70mph, you will still run out of gas either style. It is just a question of whether you make it 250mi. or 300mi.